I Got a Hammer

If I had a hammer,

I’d hammer in the morning,

I’d hammer in the evening,

All over this land.

      ~Pete Seeger

Scripture: Judges 4:17–24

Dorothy Sayers said that Sigmund Freud’s question, “What does a woman want?” is frivolous. “What is unreasonable and irritating is to assume that all one’s tastes and preferences have to be conditioned by the class to which one belongs.”

For her, the question was not, “What do women want?” but rather, “What does this woman want?”

“Are all women created to do the same thing?” she asked. “The  obvious answer is no, of course not. Never in the course of history and least of all now. Men and women are created to do a special thing in the world. Their task is to find that thing.”

She further argued that there is nothing in a woman’s shape or physical make-up  that precludes that task—which brings me to the story of Jael and the special thing she was created to do.

“The troops of Sisera fell by the sword and not a man was left”—except Sisera, the commander of the Canaanite army, who fled on foot north toward Hazor, his command post. He had almost reached safety when he came upon a Kenite camp.

Sisera had every reason to expect sanctuary with the Kenites. They were a friendly tribe, and there were ancient rules and conventions of hospitality to draw on, so he turned aside to Heber’s tent. There was no one at home but Jael, Heber’s wife.

The writer tells the story with elaborate detail: Jael invites Sisera in and gives him “thickened milk”—a yogurt drink that was mildly soporific—and hides him under a blanket where the thoroughly frightened and exhausted man drops off to sleep, a sleep from which he never awakens.

While he slumbers, Jael takes a tent peg and the mallet with which the pegs were driven into the ground and hammers the stake through Sisera’s head!

Later, Barak, the Israeli commander, pursuing Sisera, is met by Jael, who “pierces him with dark inscrutable eyes,” Charles Lamb said, who takes him by the hand to her tent, lifts the flap, and shows him the gory sight. In silence, Barak turns and walks away. The honor of the victory is not his for, as Deborah predicted, the Lord sold Sisera into a woman’s hands (4:9).

Deborah’s poetic version of Jael’s deed follows:

Her hand reached for the tent peg,

                her right hand for the workman’s hammer.

She struck Sisera, she crushed his head,

                she shattered and pierced his temple. (5:26)

You can hear Jael’s lethal hammer blows! Jael, the Terminator!

There’s something terrible and terribly grand about this woman: terrible because we wince at her bloody act; terribly grand because we witness her zeal for God. Jael’s savage sledge was a hammer of justice: from that day on, “the hand of the Israelites grew stronger and stronger against Jabin, the Canaanite king, until they destroyed him” (4:23, 24). Her heroic act was the beginning of the end of Canaanite control. Thus Israel, the repository of the “seed,” was spared to that end that she might bring salvation to the world (Genesis 3:15).

“Blessed are you among women,” Deborah sang of Jael, a phrase reminiscent of Elizabeth’s blessing of Mary, the mother of Jesus. And what did Jael do to merit such praise? Simply what lay before her: the thing she was created to do.

Admittedly, not many women (or men, for that matter) are called to carry out such violent acts. Most of their obedience comes in the ordinary affairs of everyday life. But we never know what heroism lies in quiet obedience to God, and there’s no biblical reason why a woman, in her obedience, may not play an extraordinary role in the unfolding drama of world redemption.

Carlo Carretto, the twentiety-century Italian theologian and mystic, writes,

“Today, a woman must hear the words of Jesus as a man hears them; and if Jesus says, ‘Go and make disciples of all nations,’ it must no longer be that a man hears this in one way and a woman in another. How you must re-think everything! And how I would like to say to women of today, ‘Go!’ with all the force of which my spirit is capable, and all my anxiety for the immense needs of a world athirst for the Gospel. This is an urgent invitation. Let your toil, wherever it is, be illumined by the power of your calling—for you were made to serve. Do not copy men. Be authentic. Seek, in your femaleness, the root that distinguishes you from them. It is unmistakable, for it has been willed and created by God himself. Repeat to yourselves every day: A man is not a woman.”

Women are not sub-sets of Christian men, nor are they disciplettes of Jesus. They can and should be grown-up believers, fully the equal of men in their capacity to know God, to learn from Him, and to do what He calls them to do.

So, I say to women, seek the “root that distinguishes you,” and follow Jesus. You cannot imagine where He will take you and what He will do with you there, but I can tell you this: He is “able to do immeasurably more than all [you] ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within [you]” (Ephesians 3:20).

And as for us men: When we belittle women and minimize their abilities; when we curb their God-given gifts and creativity; when we think that women, merely because they are women, can be expected to reason irrationally, act irresponsibly, and fold under pressure—we’ve missed what is said again and again in Scripture. In terms of God’s call to discipleship, there is “neither male or female” (Galatians 3:28). Women are “joint heirs” with men of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7). Thus the differences between men and women—whatever they are—make no difference at all. For us to think otherwise is both unmanly and ungodly.